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His face is too black, so it is hard to bat because his white teeth and the ball confuses me when he smiles on the mound

As far as I'm concerned that's hilarious. I'm sure there were some subtleties lost in translation, but the essence of what's he's saying is true. Its not like he said that guy is black so he shouldn't be allowed to play. It didn't strike me as racist. Non-PC for sure, but I have no use for that.

The comments on this site are a true embarrassment at times, especially when people try to show how non-offended they are. It's clearly a racist comment, because it makes reference to a long-used stereotype of a black face and smiling white teeth that has been used in racist propaganda for centuries.

What if someone made a comment about being unable to pick up a ball because of an Asian player's buck teeth or a Jewish player's nose? It was likely just a stupid comment, and not one indicative of a larger bias, but it's completely inappropriate and deserving of condemnation.

It's clearly a racist comment, because it makes reference to a long-used stereotype of a black face and smiling white teeth that has been used in racist propaganda for centuries.

Are you arguing that black people do not have black faces and comparatively white teeth? As far as I'm concerned something is only racist if it's inflammatory and untrue (saying all blacks are criminals).

Edit: there's nothing intrinsic to being Jewish or Asian that makes you have a big nose or buck teeth. But if your black that means you have ####### black skin.

Wasn't there a toothpaste sold in Asia called "Darkie," with a black face and white teeth as a logo?

It used to be called "Mr. Darkie" and was pretty awful. Growing up and going to Taiwan and seeing it was pretty shocking. Its now called "Darlie" and they changed the logo where its only mildly offensive if you remember the original name/logo.

because it makes reference to a long-used stereotype of a black face and smiling white teeth that has been used in racist propaganda for centuries.

He didn't say "I'd hate to see a black pitcher because I think that I'd have a hard time seeing the ball". That would be playing into a stereotype. He said it was actually true for this particular pitcher. Now, maybe it's not true and he just assumes it is, or thought that it would be true and so it's confirmation bias, but you can't tell any of that from the quote.

The comments on this site are a true embarrassment at times, especially when people try to show how non-offended they are

Tomorrow's threads on BBTF:

Ben Chapman, speaking truth to political correctness
Ty Cobb, equal-opportunity brawler
Why Cap Anson was making innocent use of the Latin word for "black" when he remarked, "Get that niger off the field"

Koreans are, generally speaking, horrendously racist. I have a friend from South Korea, who has darkish skin for a Korean and unuusal wide lips. She tells me her nickname growing up roughly translates into "[NANNIED-WORD-THAT-RHYMES-WITH-BIGGER] Lips" in English.

That's been my experience. In their defense, they're equal opportunity racists though; most Koreans I've met seem to think everybody who's not Korean is a quarter-step above a chimp at best.

Many Japanese are the same way, especially the part about regarding any non-Japanese as being less than human.

Everyone is. The natural state of a human being is to divide into tribes and to hate those in other tribes. It's a mark of how far we've come that we seem to have forgotten this. In the West, we have replaced race (to a large extent) with more voluntary tribes but we still do it. It's natural. Forgetting that it is natural is how we will slip back into it.

The comments on this site are a true embarrassment at times, especially when people try to show how non-offended they are. It's clearly a racist comment, because it makes reference to a long-used stereotype of a black face and smiling white teeth that has been used in racist propaganda for centuries.

It's not a "stereotype"; it's a fact. Black people do, indeed, have dark skin (some darker than others, but that in fact seems to be his point in this context) and (except the British ones) white teeth. Second, the fact that something has been used in racist propaganda does not actually make it racist for anyone to mention it. Context does, in fact, matter.

What if someone made a comment about being unable to pick up a ball because of an Asian player's buck teeth or a Jewish player's nose?

Well, then, that would be different, wouldn't it? Newsflash: stupid analogies are stupid. All references to physical characteristics are not racist just because some are. Black people are not viewed as having black skin to lampoon them; they're viewed as having black skin because that's pretty much what defines them.

It was likely just a stupid comment, and not one indicative of a larger bias, but it's completely inappropriate and deserving of condemnation.

It's not indicative of any bias. It's possible the guy doesn't like black people or thinks they are inferior, but there is absolutely no basis to infer such a belief from a reference to a physical characteristic which happens to be true.

#18 Ty Cobb was in fact an equal opportunity brawler. How else would you characterize somebody willing to fight (and get destroyed by) a guy good enough to spar with the heavyweight champion of the world (Boss Schmidt), an armless heckler, and pretty much anybody between those two extremes.

I assume that National League hitters in the 60's (much like the words of Hedley Lamarr) found Sandy Koufax "too Jewish".

In the process of converting to Judaism, it was interesting (and somewhat scary) to hear what people would openly say about Jews when they though it was "safe" to talk freely. I could be an invisble man unlike the obviously African American players.

Hey everyone, when people say something is 'racist' two different things are often meant.

1) The comment displays racial animus, hatred for people because of their skin color
2) The comment reflects racial disparities in society. It suggests a lack of understanding for the way that race affects the lives of people outside of the 'normal' color. It may not contain any intentional desire to make moral judgments about a person because of race but still CONTRIBUTES to a social pattern of racial discomfort

Category #2 contains most of the actual things that damage actual lives for people in the United States in 2013. We ought to pay attention to it. This requires thinking beyond 'racist comments can only come from racist people.'

It helps to think about these things from the perspective of the person being talked about. Would it - when aggregated with hundreds or thousands of similar comments - make you feel like a social outcast, someone who is perpetually being judged primarily via skin color rather than personality? If so, it's probably something that should be avoided. This does not require making a judgment about the prejudicial INTENT of the speaker.

As such: 'I didn't mean it that way' is an explanation but not really an excuse.

Excellent restraint on Youman's part in his response. I would think he at least would have been tempted to say something like "What's his uniform number? I need to know who to bean the next time I face them, but they all look the same to me and they all have 'Kim' on the back of their jerseys."

I used to sing in a large choir. My mom and my girlfriend (now wife) were in the audience, and my gf couldn't find me in the crowd. She asked my mom if she could pick me out, and Mom said "yeah, he's just to the left of the fat guy". At first my gf was a bit taken aback to hear someone described that way, because its rude to call someone fat. But the guy was fat, the fattest guy there by far, and we were all wearing black, so it was far and away the simplest, most sensible way to point out my location. But for some reason people have a problem with this.

His face is too black, so it is hard to bat because his white teeth and the ball confuses me when he smiles on the mound.

If you honestly do not understand why this comment is racist, you are either a) ignorant of visual racial stereotypes used to portray Africans in Europe during the Imperial era and African-Americans in the Jim Crow south (to say nothing of other times or places) or b) (much more likely) a very small and petty person who gets off on being non-PC.

It's not a "stereotype"; it's a fact. Black people do, indeed, have dark skin (some darker than others, but that in fact seems to be his point in this context) and (except the British ones) white teeth.

ignorant of visual racial stereotypes used to portray Africans in Europe during the Imperial era and African-Americans in the Jim Crow south (to say nothing of other times or places)

Coke to Vlad. Kim is a ballplayer probably born in 1988 or so, not a social commentator. He probably has had little contact with what Jim Crow or the Imperial Era is. Koreans, unlike Europeans, Americans, Africans and Arabs, did not enslave Africans. It was a clumsy statement, reflecting that the guy is probably a little weirded out seeing black people and that Youman has his number as a pitcher. Youman "shrugged" it off, so I really don't think Kim deserves any scorn for this.

Fair point. Expecting someone born in 1988 in Korea to have any clue about, let alone a sensitivity to, the history of U.S. racial oppression and stereotypes is pretty unfair. Now, to the extent that his comment reflects racial biases and/or stereotypes within his own culture, it's still fair game for criticism.

The next time your in a store or at work and you need to ask a black man a question, you should definitely refer to him as the "black or dark" guy. Then you can give him your just hilarious Mother's joke as a reference point. I'm sure you two will laugh and you'll have the black friend that you wish you always had.

Would you say "wow, you have a really big nose" to a Jewish person, even if that person did, in fact, have a big nose? No, that would be rude and offensive. Duh.

My nose is not, AFAIK, particularly big, but neither is it particularly small (for one thing, it's in my field of vision 100 percent of the time, though of course I'm used to that & don't really think about it, & for that matter I've always attributed it more to having rather deep-set eyes than anything else). I didn't realize until a couple of years after, after some 50 years of living, that it's a so-called Roman nose. Apparently, not until a friend's photo of me with a new kitten got posted on Facebook did I ever have any sort of profile shot taken. (For that matter, I guess I didn't look at it closely enough -- after all, I know what I look like! -- to realize it showed a Roman nose till another friend posted a drawing he'd done based on the photo.)

Black guy, lived in Korea for two years. I will say that, although the occasional legit racist thing happened - my coworkers chanting "Do rap!" when we went to noraebang (karaoke) the first time... but, well, I wanted to rap anyway - and even though every single person in 2009 just pointed and yelled "OBAMA!" there was very little malice and mostly just surprise and confusion from Koreans.

It was far more welcoming - even with the silliness - than times I've spent even in rural Pennsylvania.

And there was a hell of a lot more disdain for their neighboring countries.

Let's imagine the situation of an American with dark skin living in Korea:

2) The comment reflects racial disparities in society. It suggests a lack of understanding for the way that race affects the lives of people outside of the 'normal' color. It may not contain any intentional desire to make moral judgments about a person because of race but still CONTRIBUTES to a social pattern of racial discomfort

How? It's pretty obvious to everyone Youmans isn't Korean. He probably doesn't want to be Korean, and probably no one thinks that his skin color is "normal" for a Korean but it's perfectly "normal" for an American. Why would calling a guy with black skin a "guy with black skin" cause any particular "discomfort"? I read the "too black" thing as meaning that the skin color gives Youmans a competitive advantage. I'm not sure how exactly, but that seems to be what Kim is saying.

Category #2 contains most of the actual things that damage actual lives for people in the United States in 2013. We ought to pay attention to it. This requires thinking beyond 'racist comments can only come from racist people.'

As Vlad and others have said, how is this relevant to Kim?

It helps to think about these things from the perspective of the person being talked about. Would it - when aggregated with hundreds or thousands of similar comments - make you feel like a social outcast, someone who is perpetually being judged primarily via skin color rather than personality? If so, it's probably something that should be avoided. This does not require making a judgment about the prejudicial INTENT of the speaker.

Youmans as an American and a foreigner, is a social outcast in Korea in the sense that he's not part of Korean society. Yes this comment reinforces that, but it's not something that was any secret beforehand. He's there as a hired gun to win games, not to join society. Korea isn't an immigrant country. They don't expect that foreign people will ever join society. They'll do whatever job they have to do, and then go home. It is not an "insult" to call someone a foreigner, it's just a description that means "this person isn't one of us and will go home at some point". It doesn't mean that the foreigner is undeserving of respect.

#55 -- this is probably the experience of most people of any non-Korean race that live in Korea. Foreigners aren't reviled as they are in the US and Europe. They're just, well...foreign and different.

The next time your in a store or at work and you need to ask a black man a question, you should definitely refer to him as the "black or dark" guy. Then you can give him your just hilarious Mother's joke as a reference point. I'm sure you two will laugh and you'll have the black friend that you wish you always had.

As far as I'm concerned that's hilarious. I'm sure there were some subtleties lost in translation, but the essence of what's he's saying is true. Its not like he said that guy is black so he shouldn't be allowed to play. It didn't strike me as racist. Non-PC for sure, but I have no use for that.

Agreed. I think people are way to eager to put the word racist into a comment that is more than likely not racist.

The comments on this site are a true embarrassment at times, especially when people try to show how non-offended they are. It's clearly a racist comment, because it makes reference to a long-used stereotype of a black face and smiling white teeth that has been used in racist propaganda for centuries.

You have to be ####### kidding me. The over sensitive aspect of the modern world is ridiculous.

I think Blastin raises a good point in #55 - the remarks in question may be lacking in malice even if they are maladroit. Not sure we can tell without knowing more about Kyun, but assuming the worst may not be the way to go.

You mean making a pre judge on a person without the full facts of the person is probably a poor way to base an opinion on a person.

Yet the PC police want us to automatically assume everyone who has ever said anything remotely construed as 'insensitive' to take the guy out to the woodshed. I think there is a double standard at work here.

I'm based in DC, but all my work is in Southeast Asia. We had our guy in Thailand here a few years ago for his first visit to the U.S., although he'd been educated at Oxford so he spoke better english than most of us. We were having an event for the Thai ambassador at the Cosmos Club, an old outpost of snooty dc, and just making idle conversation he said to me, "Excuse me Bourbon, but where are the black people?"

and I said, "What?"

and he said, "I always hear that Washington D.C. is full of black people, and I haven't seen a single one. So where are they?"

and we wound up having a really interesting discussion about the racial history of washington d.c.

Sorry, I should have been clearer: not unless the other person in the conversation had the same level of knowledge. You don't want to do anything so silly that it would lead you to gesture toward a group of people and say, "the African American gentleman" when the only dark skinned person in the group is in fact a Frenchman of Gabonese heritage.

"Stupid". It's not a physical descriptor, so it's hard to know which of several guys you're thinking about. Although I guess you could say, "He's just to the left of the stupid guy" if you're talking about someone wearing an "I'm with stupid" shirt.

If a pitcher owned me, I could see saying "he's so ugly, I find it hard to look toward the mound when he's pitching."
Or for Bartolo, "he's so fat I find myself giggling and can't concentrate on hitting!"

I don't know, the guy said some stuff that indicates he probably hasn't spent much time around Black people, and he's probably pretty uninformed about the history of representation of Black people in popular culture and the various historical oppressions that Black people have faced and continue to face.

I'm not sure playing the "gotcha" game with regards to racist or unintentionally racist comments is really all that productive, but I'm not really sure how you handle someone saying dumb #### like this in public. I mean, this is some serious dumb ####. His smiling confuses you? How much could that dude seriously be smiling on the mound? That doesn't even make sense. I assume the guy is from some small town in Korea where there are just no black people and just the concept of black people is confusing, and he's drawing at straws trying to figure out why this guy's got his number, but the smiling thing is just weird and has a kind of ###### up history that the guy is probably not aware of.

Sorry, I should have been clearer: not unless the other person in the conversation had the same level of knowledge. You don't want to do anything so silly that it would lead you to gesture toward a group of people and say, "the African American gentleman" when the only dark skinned person in the group is in fact a Frenchman of Gabonese heritage.

A couple years ago my landlord mentioned that he had a couple other tenants that he thought I might get a kick out of meeting as we all had similar interests in beer (ie. our interest in drinking it). We were all going to meet up at a pub. My landlord called me up that evening and said he'd be late, but to just look for two German guys. It was a fairly quiet pub, so no problem. After about half an hour of no two people really fitting that description my landlord arrives and points them out - one short blond guy, and one Vietnamese guy. Apparently the Vietnamese guy had been adopted by German parents when he was a baby. So he's a citizen of Germany, and considers himself German. But I still can't help but feeling my landlord could have been a bit more helpful in his description.

#18 Ty Cobb was in fact an equal opportunity brawler. How else would you characterize somebody willing to fight (and get destroyed by) a guy good enough to spar with the heavyweight champion of the world (Boss Schmidt), an armless heckler, and pretty much anybody between those two extremes.

Schmidt even had a four round scrap with top heavyweight contender "Fireman" Jim Flynn in 1911 and lived to tell the tale. Flynn has two significant claims to fame - he fought Jack Johnson for the heavyweight title in 1912 in an ugly affair marred by Flynn's headbutting and Johnson's annoying tactic of grabbing his opponents elbows in the clinch to prevent them from punching, and in 1917 Flynn became the only man to ever be credited with a knockout win over Jack Dempsey.

The Demosey bout was an obvious fix and both men were run out of town (and boxing banned there as a result) but the verdict still stands official, nearly 100 years later.

If you honestly do not understand why this comment is racist, you are either a) ignorant of visual racial stereotypes used to portray Africans in Europe during the Imperial era and African-Americans in the Jim Crow south (to say nothing of other times or places) or b) (much more likely) a very small and petty person who gets off on being non-PC.

It's not that I don't understand why this comment is racist. It's that I deny it's racist, and actively think anyone who thinks that it is racist is an idiot.

I attended a game between the two teams in question tonight. It was at the home field for the Giants. I am seriously disappointed by the fact that they were passing out leaflets instructing fans to boo Kim when he came up to hit. And, they did each time.

I attended a game between the two teams in question tonight. It was at the home field for the Giants. I am seriously disappointed by the fact that they were passing out leaflets instructing fans to boo Kim when he came up to hit. And, they did each time.

Kim replied: “The Lotte Giants’ Youman is the most difficult player to play against. His face is too black, so it is hard to bat because his white teeth and the ball confuses me when he smiles on the mound. So, I suffered a lot.”

"In a speech to the Athens, Georgia, Chamber of Commerce, presidential contender George Wallace said, "I don't judge a man by the color of his skin. I judge him according to how well you can see him in the dark when he smiles."-- SNL Weekend Update, 1975

How about a witness to a stickup who says, 'I really couldn't identify the holdup man. He was Oriental (yes, I know), and between their all having black hair, and most of them being slender and having similar eyes, I really couldn't pick him out of a lineup'.

Chiun: You did not ask to be white. So perhaps that is not your fault. You did not ask to be here. Perhaps that is not your fault, either.

Remo Williams: Do you always talk like a Chinese fortune cookie?
Chiun: [outraged, strikes Remo, who falls to the ground in pain] Chinese! *Korean* is the most perfect creature ever to sanctify the earth with the imprint of its foot.